Five Little Pigs

“One does not, you know, employ merely the muscles. I do not need to bend and measure the footprints and pick up the cigarette ends and examine the bent blades of grass. It is enough for me to sit back in my chair and think. It is this – ” he tapped his egg-shaped head – “this, that functions!”

In one of the finest mysteries of Queen Agatha, five people - five little pigs - are suspect for the murder of Amyas, an allegedly brilliant artist who was a womanizer, a manipulator and one of those men who believe they have the right to catch as many flies as they want. Well, beware of those...flies. You never know what they carry in their wings, mate.

“It takes more than a printed notice to keep you from reality. . . . We've only one life to live.”

An idyllic summer, an act of childish wrath that had serious consequences, a man who craved reassurance, a young woman who thought everyone is a toy to meddle with. A crime with a crystal-clear perpetrator. Or maybe not. The daughter of Caroline and Amyas askes our beloved Belgian genius to investigate a murder by a lake, so that her mother may be exonerated after death. And it is now time for the little pigs to gather and cry all the way home...

The 2003 ITV adaptation with the remarkable David Suchet as Poirot is a masterpiece.

“What do most people mean when they say that? So young. Something innocent, something appealing, something helpless. But youth is not that! Youth is crude, youth is strong, youth is powerful—yes, and cruel! And one thing more—youth is vulnerable.”

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